Roomberry Project

Our primary objective for this “Roomberry Project” is to adequately gauge temperature and humidity data inside of a data center from various points. To do that, we decided to use the iCreate 2 Roomba platform. Over the past two and a half weeks, Owen and I have successfully gotten our Pi A+ to talk to the Roomba via serial port. Our goal for this week was to communicate with the Roomba, give it commands to move, stop and dock, as well as finding a proper charging solution for the Pi since it will not be utilizing the Roomba’s battery. As of today we have set up an inductive charging solution that will charge the on board LIPO battery while allowing it to run simultaneously.

Next week will primarily be working with our NOIR Pi camera and IR sensor array in an attempt to have the Roomberry become a line-following robot.

IOT Roomba Comes to Life

Our summer interns, Jimmy and Owen, have been hard at work on their Internet of Things project.  This week they got the Roomba connected to a Raspberry Pi over a serial connection. From there, they can SSH into the Pi over a WiFi connection and issue commands directly to the Roomba, and collect data from the Roomba. Ultimately, the Pi+Roomba will be autonomous, roaming around on its own and capturing environmental data.

Next they’ll be working on an inductive charging circuit to charge a LiPo battery to power the Pi independently of the Roomba, and giving the Roomba “sight” so it can identify where it is in 2D space as it takes environmental samples.

Stay tuned to our blog for future updates from the guys as they continue to report their progress.

 

DataYard’s 2016 Internship Program – Internet of Things Kick-Off!

On June 1st DataYard officially brought on two new summer interns for a specific and pretty cool project – to explore the Internet of Things (IoT)!

The chosen ones – Owen Devine and James Kinion – will be working with us through August to design, build, and deploy mobile units which report not only their own geographic location, but a slew of environmental variables as well. While we have a vague idea of how we at DataYard might accomplish this task, the interns have been set free in a sea of low-cost devices which when used together can accomplish almost anything.

We’re makers here at DataYard, and are super excited about the future of the IoT space. We got a 3D Printer for the office last Christmas, and Eric Wright has probably burned through twenty pounds of PLA over seventeen generations of a custom-fit phone Heads Up Display for his road bike. We built our own big-screen network status and reporting display, have daily DJ battles on a Raspberry Pi3 via Airplay to the MusicBox interface, and a Retrobox Pi3 for SNES emulation is coming soon – not even mentioning the custom solutions we put in place for clients every day.

We’re hoping to support the future of the IoT movement by getting some sharp young minds playing the field – and we plan to do that while deploying additional (and mobile) environmental monitoring to our data center – stay tuned for updates on DataYard’s continuing quest to innovate and create ways to Make IT Better!

Summer 2016 Internship,”Internet of Things”

During the summer of 2016 DataYard will sponsor a summer internship program for college students to explore robotics, sensors, and concepts related to IOT — the “Internet of Things”, hardware and software that uses network connections to bridge physical and virtual worlds.

What You Will Do?

Our interns will work on a real project that has a practical application. We want you to build a robot that will roam a physical space, take environmental measurements within that space, and upload the captured sensor data to a database in the cloud. Ultimately, the physical space we want the robot to roam is DataYard’s own data center.

This, by itself, is a pretty cool project that would provide some useful environmental data for DataYard. But, of course, we want to make it a little more challenging.

Not only do we want you to store the environmental measurements, but we want to know where in the physical space each environmental sample was taken. That means you’ll also need to figure out how to capture location data with the environmental sensor data.

Finally, we’d like you to create a way to visualize all the sensor data that your robot has captured. This portion of the project could be pretty software intensive, and will need to interact with databases and web servers to produce a graphical “heat map” of our data center space to show us the environmental conditions everywhere that the robot has been.

What Resources Will You Have Access To?

We’ve got a Maker space complete with tools and parts, including a Roomba robot built platform, Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, breadboards, voltmeters, sensors, motors, batteries, lots of other circuit components, and a Taz 5 3D printer to design and custom-print your own parts.

You’ll get guidance and support along the way, along with meetings with an advisor (at least twice weekly) to keep you moving in positive directions. Most of all, you need to be a self-starter who isn’t afraid of taking chances and making mistakes as you learn. You’ll get a chance to be creative, create a project plan, manage a budget (we’ll give you up to $500 to spend on extra parts you need), report on your progress, learn a ton about how stuff on the Internet works, make something cool and useful, AND make money doing something very few people get a chance to do.

What’s The Schedule & Pay?

Our internship program will run during the summer months of June, July, and August. We’re flexible on the exact stop and start dates. We’re expecting you to work on the project here in our office in Downtown Dayton up to 20 hour a week, and we’ll pay you $10/hr to soak up as much as you can while building something super cool.

Interested?

If you’re interested in participating in the DataYard 2016 IOT Internship Program please contact me, David Mezera, by email at [email protected] on or before April 30, 2016. Tell me why you think this program is for you. Thanks for your interest! I can’t wait to get you started!

[UPDATED 4/11/2016] I’ve gotten a lot of applicants, and I now understand that some of the local schools will be letting out in May. As a result, we’ll be closing the application window on Friday, April 15, so that we can make selections before April 22. Stay tuned!